The Atrocity Archives (33 page)

"Bob, get your ass down to the office right
away. This line isn't secure." I recognize that voice: I have
nightmares about it. That's because I work for its owner.

"Whoa, I was asleep, boss. Can't it"—I gulp and
look at the alarm clock—"wait until morning?"

"No. I'm calling a code blue."

"Jesus." The band of demons stomping around my
skull strike up an encore with drums. "Okay, boss. Ready to leave in
ten minutes. Can I bill a taxi fare?"

"No, it can't wait. I'll have a car pick you
up." He cuts the call, and
that
is when I
start to get frightened because even Angleton, who occupies a lair deep
in the bowels of the Laundry's Arcana Analysis Section—but does
something far scarier than that anodyne title might suggest—is liable
to think twice before authorising a car to pull in an employee at
zero-dark o'clock.

I manage to pull on a sweater and jeans, tie my
shoelaces, and get my ass downstairs just before the blue and red
strobes light up the window above the front door. On the way out I grab
my emergency bag—an overnighter full of stuff that Andy suggested I
should keep ready "just in case"—and slam and lock the door and turn
around in time to find the cop waiting for me. "Are you Bob Howard?"

"Yeah, that's me." I show him my card.

"If you'll come with me, sir."

Lucky me: I get to wake up on my way in to work
four hours early, in the front passenger seat of a police car with
strobes flashing and the driver doing his best to scare me into
catatonia. Lucky London: the streets are nearly empty at this time of
night, so we zip around the feral taxis and somnolent cleaning trucks
without pause. A journey that would normally take an hour and a half
takes fifteen minutes. (Of course, it comes at a price: Accounting
exists in a state of perpetual warfare with the rest of the civil
service over internal billing, and the Metropolitan Police charge for
their services as a taxi firm at a level that would make you think they
provided limousines with wet bars. But Angleton has declared a code
blue, so … )

The dingy-looking warehouse in a side street,
adjoining a closed former primary school, doesn't look too
promising—but the door opens before I can raise a hand to knock on it.
The grinning sallow face of Fred from Accounting looms out of the
darkness in front of me and I recoil before I realise that it's all
right—Fred's been dead for more than a year, which is why he's on the
night shift. This isn't going to degenerate into plaintive requests for
me to fix his spreadsheet. "Fred, I'm here to see Angleton," I say
very
clearly, then I whisper a special password to
stop him from eating me. Fred retreats back to his security cubbyhole
or coffin or whatever it is you call it, and I cross the threshold of
the Laundry. It's dark—to save light bulbs, and damn the health and
safety regs—but some kind soul has left a mouldering cardboard box of
hand torches on the front desk. I pull the door shut behind me, pick up
a torch, and head for Angleton's office.

As I get to the top of the stairs I see that the
lights are on in the corridor we call Mahogany Row. If the boss is
running a crisis team then that's where I'll find him. So I divert into
executive territory until I see a door with a red light glowing above
it. There's a note taped to the door handle:
BOB
HOWARD ACCESS PERMITTED
. So I "access permitted" and walk
right
in.

As soon as the door opens Angleton looks up from
the map spread across the boardroom table. The room smells of stale
coffee, cheap cigarettes, and fear. "You're late," he says sharply.

"Late," I echo, dumping my emergency bag under
the fire extinguisher and leaning on the door. " 'Lo, Andy, Boris.
Boss, I don't think the cop was taking his time. Any faster and he'd be
billing you for brown stain removal from the upholstery." I yawn.
"What's the picture?"

"Milton Keynes," says Andy.

"Are sending you there to investigate," explains
Boris.

"With extreme prejudice," Angleton one-ups them.

"
Milton Keynes?
"

It must be something in my expression; Andy
turns away hastily and pours me a cup of Laundry coffee while Boris
pretends it's none of his business. Angleton just looks as if he's
bitten something unpleasant, which is par for the course.

"We have a problem," Angleton explains,
gesturing at the map. "There are too many concrete cows."

"Concrete cows." I pull out a chair and flop
down into it heavily, then rub my eyes. "This isn't a dream is it, by
any chance? No? Shit."

Boris glowers at me: "Not a joke." He rolls his
eyes toward Angleton. "Boss?"

"It's no joke, Bob," says Angleton. His normally
skeletal features are even more drawn than usual, and there are dark
hollows under his eyes. He looks as if he's been up all night. Angleton
glances at Andy: "Has he been keeping his weapons certification
up-to-date?"

"I practice three times a week," I butt in,
before Andy can get started on the intimate details of my personal
file. "Why?"

"Go down to the armoury right now, with Andy.
Andy, self-defense kit for one, sign it out for him. Bob, don't shoot
unless it's you or them." Angleton shoves a stack of papers and a pen
across the table at me. "Sign the top and pass it back—you now have
GAME ANDES REDSHIFT clearance. The files below are part of GAR—you're
to keep them on your person at all times until you get back here, then
check them in via Morag's office; you'll answer to the auditors if they
go missing or get copied."

"Huh?"

I obviously still look confused because Angleton
cracks an expression so frightening that it must be a smile and adds,
"Shut your mouth, you're drooling on your collar. Now, go with Andy,
check out your hot kit, let Andy set you up with a chopper, and
read
those papers. When you get to Milton Keynes, do what comes naturally.
If you don't find anything, come back and tell me and we'll take things
from there."

"But what am I looking for?" I gulp down half my
coffee in one go; it tastes of ashes, stale cigarette ends, and tinned
instant left over from the Retreat from Moscow. "Dammit, what do you
expect me to find?"

"I don't expect anything," says Angleton. "Just
go."

"Come on," says Andy, opening the door, "you can
leave the papers here for now."

I follow him into the corridor, along to the
darkened stairwell at the end, and down four flights of stairs into the
basement. "Just what the fuck
is
this?" I demand, as Andy
produces a key and unlocks the steel-barred gate in
front of the security tunnel.

"It's GAME ANDES REDSHIFT, kid," he says over
his shoulder. I follow him into the security zone and the gate clanks
shut behind me. Another key, another steel door—this time the outer
vestibule of the armoury. "Listen, don't go too hard on Angleton, he
knows what he's doing. If you go in with preconceptions about what
you'll find and it turns out to be GAME ANDES REDSHIFT, you'll probably
get yourself killed. But I reckon there's only about a 10 percent
chance it's the real thing—more likely it's a drunken student prank."

He uses another key, and a secret word that my
ears refuse to hear, to open the inner armoury door. I follow Andy
inside. One wall is racked with guns, another is walled with ammunition
lockers, and the opposite wall is racked with more esoteric items. It's
this that he turns to.

"A prank," I echo, and yawn, against my better
judgement. "Jesus, it's half past four in the morning and you got me
out of bed because of a student prank?"

"Listen." Andy stops and glares at me,
irritated. "Remember how you came aboard? That was
me
getting
out of bed at four in the morning because of a student prank."

"Oh," is all I can say to him.
Sorry
springs to mind, but is probably inadequate; as they later pointed out
to me, applied computational demonology and built-up areas don't mix
very well.
I
thought I was just generating weird new fractals;
they
knew I was dangerously close to landscaping Wolverhampton with alien
nightmares. "What kind of students?" I ask.

"Architecture or alchemy. Nuclear physics for an
outside straight." Another word of command and Andy opens the sliding
glass case in front of some gruesome relics that positively throb with
power. "Come on. Which of these would you like?"

"I think I'll take this one, thanks." I reach in
and carefully pick up a silver locket on a chain; there's a
yellow-and-black thaumaturgy hazard trefoil on a label dangling from
it, and
NO PULL
ribbons attached to the
clasp.

"Good choice." Andy watches me in silence as I
add a Hand of Glory to my collection, and then a second, protective
amulet. "That all?" he asks.

"That's all," I say, and he nods and shuts the
cupboard, then renews the seal on it.

"Sure?" he asks.

I look at him. Andy is a slightly built,
forty-something guy; thin, wispy hair, tweed sports jacket with leather
patches at the elbows, and a perpetually worried expression. Looking at
him you'd think he was an Open University lecturer, not a
managerial-level spook from the Laundry's active service division. But
that goes for all of them, doesn't it? Angleton looks more like a Texan
oil-company executive with tuberculosis than the legendary and
terrifying head of the Counter-Possession Unit. And me, I look like a
refugee from CodeCon or a dot-com startup's engineering department.
Which just goes to show that appearances and a euro will get you a cup
of coffee. "What does this code blue look like to you?" I ask.

He sighs tiredly, then yawns. "Damn, it's
infectious," he mutters. "Listen, if I tell you what it looks like to
me, Angleton will have my head for a doorknob. Let's just say,
read
those files on the way over, okay? Keep your eyes open, count the
concrete cows, then come back safe."

"Count the cows. Come back safe. Check." I sign
the clipboard, pick up my arsenal, and he opens the armoury door. "How
am I getting there?"

Andy cracks a lopsided grin. "By police
helicopter. This is a code blue, remember?"

I go up to the committee
room, collect the papers, and then it's down to the front door,
where the same police patrol car is waiting for me. More brown-pants
motoring—this time the traffic is a little thicker, dawn is only an
hour and a half away—and we end up in the northeast
suburbs, following the roads to Lippitts Hill where the Police ASU keep
their choppers. There's no messing around with check in and departure
lounges; we drive round to a gate at one side of the complex, show our
warrant cards, and my chauffeur takes me right out onto the heliport
and parks next to the ready room, then hands me over to the flight crew
before I realise what's happening.

"You're Bob Howard?" asks the copilot. "Up here,
hop in." He helps me into the back seat of the Twin Squirrel, sorts me
out with the seat belt, then hands me a bulky headset and plugs it in.
"We'll be there in half an hour," he says. "You just relax, try to
get
some sleep." He grins sardonically then shuts the door on me and
climbs
in up front.

Funny. I've never been in a helicopter before.
It's not quite as loud as I'd expected, especially with the headset on,
but as I've been led to expect something like being rolled down a hill
in an oil drum while maniacs whack on the sides with baseball bats,
that isn't saying much.
Get some sleep
indeed; instead I bury
my nose in the so-secret reports on GAME ANDES REDSHIFT and try not to
upchuck as the predawn London landscape corkscrews around outside the
huge glass windscreen and then starts to unroll beneath us.

REPORT 1: Sunday September 4th,
1892

CLASSIFIED MOST SECRET, Imperial
War Ministry, September 11th, 1914

RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME
ANDES, Ministry of War, July 2nd, 1940

RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REDSHIFT,
Ministry of Defense, August 13th, 1988

My dearest Nellie,

In the week since I last wrote to you,
I have to confess that I have become a different man. Experiences such
as the ordeal I have just undergone must surely
come but once in a lifetime; for if more often, how might man survive
them? I have gazed upon the gorgon and lived to tell the tale, for
which I am profoundly grateful (and I hasten to explain myself before
you worry for my safety), although only the guiding hand of some angel
of grace can account for my being in a position to put ink to paper
with these words.

I was at dinner alone with the Mehtar
last Tuesday evening—Mr. Robertson being laid up, and Lieutenant Bruce
off to Gilgut to procure supplies for his secret expedition to
Lhasa—when we were interrupted most rudely at our repast. "Holiness!"
The runner, quite breathless with fear, threw himself upon his knees in
front of us. "Your brother … ! Please hasten, I
implore you!"

His excellency Nizam ul Mulk looked at
me with that wicked expression of his: he bears little affection for
his brutish hulk of a brother, and with good reason. Where the Mehtar
is a man of refined, albeit questionable sensibilities, his brother is
an uneducated coarse hill-man, one step removed from banditry. Chittral
can very well do without his kind. "What has happened to my beloved
brother?" asked ul Mulk.

At this point the runner lapsed into a
gabble that I could barely understand. With patience the Mehtar drew
him out—then frowned. Turning to me, he said, "We have a—I know not
the
word for it in English, excuse please. It is a monster of the caves and
passes who preys upon my people. My brother has gone to hunt it, but it
appears to have got the better of him."

"A mountain lion?" I said,
misunderstanding.

"No." He looked at me oddly. "May I
enquire of you, Captain, whether Her Majesty's government tolerates
monsters within her empire?"

"Of course not!"

"Then you will not object to joining
me in the hunt?"

I could feel a trap closing on me, but
could not for the life of me see what it might
be. "Certainly," I said. "By Jove, old chap, we'll have this
monster's
head mounted on your trophy room wall before the week is out!"

"I think not," Nizam said coolly. "We
burn such things here, to drive out the evil spirit that gave rise to
them. Bring you your
mirror
, tomorrow?"

"My—" Then I realised what he was
talking about, and what deadly jeopardy I had placed my life in, for
the honour of Her Majesty's government in Chittral: he was talking
about a Medusa. And although it quite unmans me to confess it, I was
afraid.

The next day, in my cramped,
windowless hut, I rose with the dawn and dressed for the hunt. I armed
myself, then told Sergeant Singh to ready a squad of troopers for the
hunt.

"What is the quarry, sahib?" he
asked.

"The beast that no man sees," I
said,
and the normally imperturbable trooper flinched.

"The men won't like that, sir," he
said.

"They'll like it even less if I hear
any words from them," I said. You have to be firm with colonial
troops:
they have only as much backbone as their commanding officer.

"I'll tell them that, sahib," he
said
and, saluting, went to ready our forces.

The Mehtar's men gathered outside; an
unruly bunch of hillmen, armed as one might expect with a mix of
flintlocks and bows. They were spirited, like children, excitable and
bickering; hardly a match for the order of my troopers and I. We showed
them how it was done! Together with the Mehtar at our head, kestrel on
his wrist, we rode out into the cold bright dawn and the steep-sided
mountain valley.

We rode for the entire morning and
most of the afternoon, climbing up the sides of a steep pass and then
between two towering peaks clad in gleaming white snow. The mood of the
party was uncommonly quiet, a sense of apprehensive
fortitude settling over the normally ebullient Chittrali warriors. We
came at last to a meanspirited hamlet of tumbledown shacks, where a
handful of scrawny goats grazed the scrubby bushes; the hetman of the
village came to meet us, and with quavering voice directed us to our
destination.

"It lies thuswise," remarked my
translator, adding: "The old fool, he say it is a ghost-bedevilled
valley, by God! He say his son go in there two, three days ago, not
come out. Then the Mehtar—blessed be he—his brother follow with his
soldiers. And that two days ago."

"Hah. Well," I said, "tell him the
great white empress sent me here with these fine troops he sees, and
the Mehtar himself and his nobles, and
we
aren't feeding any
monster!"

The translator jabbered at the hetman
for a while, and he looked stricken. Then Nizam beckoned me over.
"Easy, old fellow," he said.

"As you say, your excellency."

He rode forward, beckoning me
alongside. I felt the need to explain myself further: "I do not
believe
one gorgon will do for us. In fact, I do believe we will do for it!"

"It is not that which concerns me,"
said the ruler of the small mountain kingdom. "But go easy on the
hetman. The monster was his wife."

We rode the rest of the way in
reflective silence, to the valley where the monster had built her
retreat, the only noises the sighing of wind, the thudding of hooves,
and the jingling of our kits. "There is a cave halfway up the wall of
the valley, here," said the messenger who had summoned us. "She lives
there, coming out at times to drink and forage for food. The villagers
left her meals at first, but in her madness she slew one of them, and
then they stopped."

Such tragic neglect is unknown in
England, where the poor victims of this most hideous ailment are
confined in mazed bedlams upon their diagnosis, blindfolded
lest they kill those who nurse them. But what more can one expect of
the half-civilized children of the valley kingdoms, here on the top of
the world?

The execution—for want of a better
word—proceeded about as well as such an event can, which is to say
that
it was harrowing and not by any means enjoyable in the way that hunting
game can be. At the entrance to the small canyon where the woman had
made her lair, we paused. I detailed Sergeant Singh to ready a squad of
rifles; their guns loaded, they took up positions in the rocks, ready
to beat back the monster should she try to rush us.

Having thus prepared our position, I
dismounted and, joining the Mehtar, steeled myself to enter the valley
of death.

I am sure you have read lurid tales of
the appalling scenes in which gorgons are found; charnel houses strewn
with calcined bodies, bones protruding in attitudes of agony from the
walls as the madmen and madwomen who slew them gibber and howl among
their victims. These tales are, I am thankful to say, constructed out
of whole cloth by the fevered imaginations of the degenerate scribblers
who write for the penny dreadfuls. What we found was both less—and
much
worse—than that.

We found a rubble-strewn valley; in
one side of it a cave, barely more than a cleft in the rock face, with
a tumbledown awning stretched across its entrance. An old woman sat
under the awning, eyes closed, humming to herself in an odd singsong.
The remains of a fire lay in front of her, logs burned down to
white-caked ashes; she seemed to be crying, tears trickling down her
sunken, wrinkled cheeks.

The Mehtar gestured me to silence,
then, in what I only later recognized as a supremely brave gesture,
strode up to the fire. "Good evening to you, my aunt, and it would
please me that you keep your eyes closed, lest my guards be forced to
slay you of an instant," he said.

The woman kept up her low, keening
croon—like a wail of grief from one who has cried
until her throat is raw and will make no more noise. But her eyes
remained obediently shut. The Mehtar crouched down in front of her.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked
gently.

The crooning stopped. "You are the
royal one," she said, her voice a cracked whisper. "They told me you
would come."

"Indeed I have," he said, a
compassionate tone in his voice. With one hand he waved me closer. "It
is very sad, what you have become."

"It
hurts.
" She wailed
quietly, startling the soldiers so that one of them half-rose to his
feet. I signalled him back down urgently as I approached behind her. "I
wanted to see my son one more time … "

"It is all right, aunt," he said
quietly. "You'll see him soon enough." He held out a hand to me; I
held
out the leather bag and he removed the mirror. "Be at peace, aunt. An
end to pain is in sight." He held the mirror at arms length in front
of
his face, above the fire before her: "Open your eyes when you are
ready
for it."

She sobbed once, then opened her eyes.

I didn't know what to expect, dear
Nellie, but it was not this: somebody's aged mother, crawling away from
her home to die with a stabbing pain in her head, surrounded by misery
and loneliness. As it is, her monarch spared her the final pain, for as
soon as she looked into the mirror she
changed.
The story that
the gorgon kills those who see her by virtue of her ugliness is untrue;
she was merely an old woman—the evil was something in her gaze,
something to do with the act of perception.

As soon as her eyes opened—they were
bright blue, for a moment—she changed. Her skin puffed up and her hair
went to dust, as if in a terrible heat. My skin prickled; it was as if
I had placed my face in the open door of a furnace. Can you imagine
what it would be like if a body were to be heated in an instant to the
temperature of a blast furnace? For that is what it was like. I will
not describe this horror in any detail, for it is
not fit material for discussion. When the wave of heat cleared, her
body toppled forward atop the fire—and rolled apart, yet more calcined
logs amidst the embers.

The Mehtar stood, and mopped his brow.
"Summon your men, Francis," he said, "they must build a cairn
here."

"A cairn?" I echoed blankly.

"For my brother." He gestured
impatiently at the fire into which the unfortunate woman had tumbled.
"Who else do you think this could have been?"

A cairn was built, and we camped
overnight in the village. I must confess that both the Mehtar and I
have been awfully sick since then, with an abnormal rapidity that came
on since the confrontation. Our men carried us back home, and that is
where you find me now, lying abed as I write this account of one of the
most horrible incidents I have ever witnessed on the frontier.

I remain your obedient and loving
servant,
Capt. Francis Younghusband